In a typical Internet session, a user dials up a local access number for their Internet Service Provider (ISP). The local access number provides the user entry into the ISP's network, which may be owned by a wholesaler. The wholesaler allows the ISP to use the physical connections, routers, and servers under a lease agreement that is typically known as a service level agreement (SLA). The wholesaler must purchase enough equipment, ports and circuits, with enough redundancy to be able to honor the SLAs. The local access entry point into which the user dials may be referred to as a point-of-presence (POP), the network may be referred to as a wholesale network and the ISP may be the wholesaler's customer.
In some implementations, wholesalers manage their networks through a single resource server. As wholesalers expand policy enforcement applications, some have moved to several different servers and network devices that distribute the policy management tasks. An example of such a distributed system is Cisco's Resource Policy Management System (RPMS).
When end users are rejected after trying to initiate an ISP session, they will frequently register their complaints with their ISP. The ISP, in turn, may seek explanation from the wholesale network owner when their customer service is interrupted. The ISP and other customers of the wholesale network owner are accustomed to counting the total number of rejections that they experience during a period of time. However, wholesale providers do not typically compare the rejections their customers receive in light of the total rejections for every SLA on the network because the cumulative values can be enormous and also because the number of sessions serviced under large SLAs can dwarf those of a small SLA by several orders of magnitude.
Wholesale providers must be able to simultaneously monitor multiple customer accounts where each account may differ in active calls by the two to three orders of magnitude. Embodiments of the invention, as will be explained, address these and other problems.